I recently purchased a new laptop (Dell) with Windows 7.  How do I stop the mouse (touchpad) from selecting items by just hovering the cursor over them and without a click?

best,

ScottMouse Properties in Control Paneltried that.  no joy. 

is there a "systems options" box someplace that needs to be either selected (or unselected) for something like:  "select on click only"?Windows Explorer Tools->Folder Options, investigate the "click items as follows" frame, make sure "double click to open an item (single click to select)" is  selected.

If it is, then the problem is more the WAY you are using the touchpad- most touchpads allow you to quickly tap the pad to perform a click action. sometimes it can be too sensitive, or, more likely, I've FOUND people who have this problem to be practically hovering over top of the touchpad, rather then solidly touching it (so the touchpad registers a lot of... touches).


For me, if I wanted to disable this on my laptop, I would have to go into Mouse Properties, and CHOOSE a tab CALLED "Device Settings" which is added by the touchpad DRIVER. I would then choose the appropriate item in the "Devices:" listview and select "settings". At this point a new window would appear, containing various options, one of which is "Tapping". Where I can enable or disable that feature. I'm not sure if that is what is the problem in your case but it certainly sounds plausible.